Billy Budd, sailor, and other stories [Penguin English library] [Bartleby.--Cock-a-doodle-doo!--The Encantades.--The bell-tower.--Benito Cereno.--John Marr.--Billy Budd, sailor.--Daniel Orme.]

[Baltimore] Penguin Books, 1970, 1970. Book. Very Good. Soft cover. 465 pages 18 cm ; paperback ; Contents: Bartleby.--Cock-a-doodle-doo!--The Encantades.--The bell-tower.--Benito Cereno.--John Marr.--Billy Budd, sailor.--Daniel Orme. ; ISBN: 0140430296; 9780140430295 ; LC: PZ3.M498; Dewey: 813 ; OCLC: 2110807 ; "Bartleby the Scrivener explores the theme of isolation in American life and the workplace through actual physical loneliness and mental loneliness. Although all of the characters at the office are related by being co-workers, Bartleby is the only one whose name is known to us and seems serious, as the rest of characters have odd nicknames, such as ""Nippers"" or ""Turkey."" This excludes him from being normal in the workplace. Bartleby's former job was at the ""Dead Letter Office"" that received mail with nowhere to go, representing the isolation of communication that Bartleby had at both places of work, being that he was given a separate work area for himself at the lawyer's office. Bartleby begins to never leave the office, but repeats what he does all day long, copying, staring, and repeating his famous words of ""I would prefer not to,"" leading readers to have another image of the repetition that leads to isolation on Wall Street and the American workplace" ; In " The Bell Tower" the architect Bannadonna wants to challenge the laws of nature, building the most beautiful tower of Italy, a new Tower of Babel, with a huge iron bell. The architect is the victim of his own obsession as he sees in man and in his technological knowledge the real God. His creations become the symbols of his crimes. While making the tower he kills one of his employees, his skull will be part of the surface of the bell ; Benito Cereno tells what happens when an American merchant ship comes upon a mysterious Spanish ship where the nearly all-black crew and their white captain are starving and yet hostile to offers of help ; Ib BIlly Budd, In this short history of the impressment and hanging of a handsome sailor-boy are to be discovered problems as profound as those which puzzle us in the pages of the Gospels.' Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. ; VG.